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Check out the LTLF match report in BallsMania. Read the original post on BallsMania

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Check out the LTLF match report in BallsMania. Read the original post on BallsMania

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Click to read magazine online

Check out the LTLF match report in BallsMania. Read the original post on BallsMania

Find out more about Forest blogs on LTLF

Click to read magazine online

Check out the LTLF match report in BallsMania. Read the original post on BallsMania

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“They do not consist of diplomats, or even professors of political law, or even individuals capable of forming a rational opinion; they consist of plain mortals, wavering and inclined to doubt and uncertainty.” – Mein Kampf

You know, if it wasn’t for the Football League’s ceaseless commitment to self-parody, they might actually find the time to start sorting out football every now and again. Unfortunately, though, this commitment is hewn into the same rock that spawned Sam Allardyce’s jaw, a relentless pledge that is all-consuming. At Soho Square, doubt and uncertainty are not so much inclinations as magnetic compulsions: it is a swamp of ill-governed dawdling, where the simplest of matters acquires the windy palaver of a Womens’ Institute cheesecake seminar. Consequently, the Football League’s management of the domestic game has all the cogency, gravitas and influence of a harassed supply teacher….

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“Alan Shearer is not only a possible choice… but a necessary one.”
Aspley Red, ‘Damned Uniteds’, March 29, 2009

And so, on March 31st, in the two thousandth and ninth year of Wor Lord, there came news of a man begrudgingly shaking hands with his destiny. And whilst I may have strayed into somewhat narcissistic waters here, opening an article by quoting myself, what else can you say? Newcastle United dally ceaselessly with self-parody. They love a challenge. And so, it seems, does Alan, who appears to be the only person in the North East who’s actually thought this whole business through…

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In this glorious game of ours, one of the most popular – nay, unanswerable – pieces of brinksmanship is that ‘x’ is, truly, ‘a football town’. More often than not, that’s shorthand for “because it’s miles from anywhere and there’s nothing else to do”, but still it sustains itself as the consoling, bullet-proof myth against footballing incompetence. Because however poor a team may be, they still have that umbilical link with their community that means, really, in the grand scheme of things, so much more…

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They may have lost some battles along the way, but by God, haven’t they just won the war? The East End has a storied history of villainy and turpitude, and as the dust settles on the Carlos Tevez fiasco, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson must be writing hush cheques with the zeal of a young Ronnie Kray. As Sheffield United agreed to a sliver of the compensation they sought through the High Courts, West Ham have inked a rotten footnote into the history of top flight football in this country; namely, that there is now a cash price on a Premier League place…

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Let’s face it, football is a game peopled by idiots. And that’s probably for the best, because it wouldn’t have survived otherwise. It’s a game swollen with burps of spirit and farts of the soul, everything hinging on rude instinct, because it’s hard to cultivate things like love and hate and outrage and ecstasy against any halfway consistent backdrop of intelligence. But let a distinction be forged here between the earnest idiocy of the penniless, put-upon fan at the fag-end of a 470 mile round trip to Plymouth, and the idiot, populist whimsy of football’s presence in the mainstream media today. That presence, and the faddish half-breed it’s spawned. Match of the Day and its sickly, fawning cronyism. The Championship, football’s very own Fat Camp; a grottily eager concession to the game’s under-the-stairs freakshows and six-limbed freaks. Sky Sports News, with its perpetually looped non-stories, Christiano Ronaldo’s contract, Ledley King’s knees, chaining us all umbilically into the global football economy…

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So where is he? That’s what everyone’s been asking this week. The LMA have only gone and commissioned a print recognizing the fifty greatest contributors to English football management throughout the last century, and the artist – Colin Yates – has only gone and forgotten Him. A man of substance and character, a gritty autocrat who bestrode, bedevilled, bewitched the game with a bloody-minded commitment to his own methods, a man who swept a team to glory on the back of a steely defence and a magical, portly left winger. And it gets worse. Not only has he forgotten Colin Calderwood… there’s no Brian Clough either.

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Check out the LTLF match report in BallsMania. Read the original post on BallsMania

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Click to read magazine online

Check out the LTLF match report in BallsMania. Read the original post on BallsMania

Find out more about Forest blogs on LTLF

Click to read magazine online

Read the original post on BallsMania

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Read the original post on BallsMania

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